Regional Issues
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N o t e s
1 . Y. Wane (1974), ‘Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa. Le soufisme intégral de Madiina Gunaas (Sénégal)’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines, 56, XIV-4, pp.671-698. 2 . E. van Hoven (1996), ‘Local tradition or Islamic
precept? The notion of zakat in Wuli (Eastern S e n e g a l ) ’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines, 144, XXXVI-4, pp.703-722.
3 . M. Magassouba (1985), L’Islam au Sénégal: Demain les Mollahs? La ‘question’ musulmane et l e s partis politiques au Sénégal de 1946 à nos jours. Paris: Karthala.
4 . C. Coulon (1988), Les Musulmans et le Pouvoir en Afrique noire: Réligion et contre-culture. Paris: Karthala.
Dr Ed van Hoven is a post-doctoral researcher at the School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies, University of Leiden, the Netherlands.
E-mail: e.vanhoven@inter.nl.net
Ahmed Tijan Be, current caliph of Medina Gounass
We s t A f r i ca E D V A N H O V E N
Medina Gounass is an isolated religious community
situated in a remote area of Senegal. Until the 1980s,
the leader of this branch of the Tijan t a r i q a r e f u s e d
all contact with the state authorities. The imperatives
of s h a r i ’ a were rigorously applied in nearly all
as-pects of social and religious life. But after the death
of the founder of the community, things changed
dramatically. Disputes between the heirs of the
foun-der’s legacy, struggles over agricultural resources,
and fierce competition between supporters of
politi-cal parties, made the intervention of the worldly
au-thorities inevitable. Today, the community of
Medi-na GouMedi-nass is, like so many Sufi orders in Senegal,
courted by the state elite.
Medina Gounass:
the End of a Religious
I s o l a t e
Located some 85 km south of the regional capital Tambacounda in eastern Senegal, Medina Gounass is one of the largest com-munities of the Haute Casamance region. Its inhabitants, mainly of Hal Pular (Toucou-leur) and Peul origin, live in the many quar-ters of the community. A modern road sys-tem, constructed at the beginning of the 1980s, just after the ascension of the first caliph, is centred around the huge mosque. Its impressive minaret can hardly be missed upon entering the village by one of the dusty bush roads.
Ahmed Tijan Ba, usually referred to as t h i-e r n o, is thi-e curri-ent caliph of thi-e communi-ty. He is the spiritual guide of the numerous followers living in Medina Gounass as well as abroad. His leadership extends to nearly all domains of everyday life in the commu-nity. He is both the politico-religious leader and judge. People choose to live in the community because they feel that his ‘closeness to God’ (w a l a y a) is beneficial. Others, living elsewhere in Senegal or abroad, pay visits from time to time to Med-ina Gounass. Nowadays, the adepts have photographs, sold in the local shops, through which they experience the venera-tion of the t h i e r n o.
While walking the streets of Medina Gounass, one notices immediately the ab-sence of women. It is stated that women should stay at home and rarely go out. If they do, they should be veiled – even with-in the confwith-ines of the compound. Women often gather to listen to the words of
Thier-no Amadou Seydou Ba, the community’s founder who died in 1980, recorded on t a p e .
The foundation of the
com-m u n i t y
Thierno Amadou Seydou Ba founded Medina Gounass in 1935. He was a Hal Pular originally from the Fouta Tooro, a region lo-cated in the middle valley of the Senegal River. After several years of travel and study, mainly in the southern Casamance region, he finally settled in Medina Gounass with a handful of disciples. He preached the Tijan w i r d, a litany of prayers brought to Senegal from Morocco in the 19t hcentury by the Hal
Pular militant El Hadji Omar Tall.
At the outset, Medina Gounass was not more than a simple residential centre for fol-lowers, connected to the private home of the t h i e r n o. But it began to develop rapidly when large crowds of followers, mostly flee-ing the harsh manifestations of colonialism or the dictatorial regimes in some parts of the subregion (e.g. Sekou Toure’s Guinee-Conakry), settled in the community. While the circle of disciples expanded, the t h i e r n o demonstrated an extraordinary b a r a k a. And this to the extent that he was able to trans-form a small group of adepts into a self-con-scious religious community, with an elabo-rated structure and a firm religious base in the s h a r i ’ a.
Under the guidance of the t h i e r n o, Medina Gounass soon became a religious isolate. Contacts with the French colonial state and then, after 1960, the independent state of Senegal, were limited to the paying of taxes and the commercialization of cash crops. In one of the few published articles on this re-ligious community, the t h i e r n o stressed his fight against innovations (b i d ’ a) and took a firm line on the implementation of s h a r i ’ a.1
Unlike other rural communities, where the state introduced its officials and the agricul-tural cooperatives, Medina Gounass became a new ‘Pakistan’, land of the pure, from which all b i d a were excluded.
Thierno Amadou Seydou Ba’s stress on as-ceticism and isolation was to some extent a response to the luxury and corruption that went with the implementation of the bu-reaucratic state, but was also a perhaps un-intended response to other Senegalese Sufi orders, and the well-known m a r a b o u t - h o m-me d’affaires in particular, who lived in luxu-ry and closely cooperated with the worldly powers. Even during its annual d a k a a, the nine-day spiritual retreat in the nearby for-est, none of the state authorities were invit-ed. Some fervent militants even engaged in violent protest against the icons of modern-ity; the t h i e r n o’s adepts were accused of having set fire to the Simenti tourist hotel in the Niokolokoba national park.
Outside interference
After the death of the community’s founder, internal quarrels began to under-mine the unity of this ‘mini-republic’. The appointment of Ahmed Tijan Ba, the foun-der’s son, as caliph was heatedly debated. The Peul section of the community claimed the leadership saying that they were the first to have settled in Medina Gounass. In
1977, party-politics entered the community. The Peul section voted massively for the op-position’s Parti Démocratique Sénégalais (PDS), while the t h i e r n o, by then seriously ill and hardly capable of leading his followers, supported the ruling Parti Socialiste (PS). Al-ready in 1975, he had banned commercial cotton cultivation, which was the main source of income for the Peul population. The leader told his followers that cotton cul-tivation would lead to a serious reduction in women’s fertility.2 But other more worldly
motives played a role as well.
Like most Sufi orders in Senegal, the com-munity leaders controlled peanut cultiva-tion, which was an important source of in-come. Cotton cultivation, however, by-passed local agencies of control. Contracts were signed with individual farmers, per-sonally responsible for fulfilling the condi-tions rigorously specified by the state-owned cotton company SODEFITEX. Farm-ers were now paid in cash, instead of the bon d’achat, used in the case of peanut culti-vation, which could easily be gathered by the community’s leader. The effect on the community’s cohesion was devastating: fights broke out and several casualties were reported. The Peul left Medina Gounass on a massive scale to settle in nearby villages. For the first time in the history of the communi-ty, police forces intervened in their internal a f f a i r s .3
These events, of course, changed the posi-tion of the community v i s - à - v i s the naposi-tional state. Today many state officials court Medi-na GouMedi-nass. During the latest d a k a a c e l e-bration, regional as well as national state representatives made their way to Medina Gounass. President Abdou Diouf sent a del-egation to ‘greet and encourage’ the t h i e r n o and to wish him and the attendants success and ‘a perfect spiritual communion’. Might these and other events that have marked the recent history of Medina Gounass, pre-lude the end of the isolationist posture of this Sufi order?
Beyond the State
It is true that with these developments, a degree of ambiguity entered this religious community. Notwithstanding the many in-ternal problems, which continued during the 1990s, Medina Gounass has not lost all of its original appeal. It is still a large com-munity – approximately 14,000 inhabitants – guided by Ahmed Tijan Ba. So far, no offi-cial state structures have been created in the village. Religious and secular matters are still dealt with by the t h i e r n o, who is ad-mired and venerated by his many adepts.
Though agriculture forms the most impor-tant source of income for the t h i e r n o ’ s f o l-lowers, commercial activities are expanding quite rapidly. Successful businessmen have gone abroad, securing a steady flow of in-come to the community and thus to its lead-ers. International relations have always been vital for the community; but today, they seem to have become even more im-portant. Many followers migrated to Europe and America while important sums of mon-ey found their way back to Medina Gounass. This trend, which seems to be accelerating in the last years, enabled the community to
reinforce its autonomy v i s - à - v i s the Senegal-ese state. The financial resources pouring into the community from abroad clearly by-pass the state, in contrast to the income generated by cash-crop cultivation which had to be sold directly to the state-con-trolled companies.
The benefits of success, measured by the impressive housing facilities some of the mi-grants constructed in Medina Gounass, are entirely attributed to the t h i e r n o. Considera-ble sums of money are given to him in grat-itude and in order to ensure further financial success. In the eyes of the followers, their material success is only intelligible in terms of the t h i e r n o ’ s saintliness and his ability to teach the ‘right path’.
Medina Gounass has always been a major centre of learning, attracting many students from neighbouring communities and abroad. Most children only attend the Qur’an schools in the community, generally run by the disciples of the t h i e r n o. They learn to memorize portions of the Qur’an and the basic ritual obligations. In this part of the country, the traditional learning cen-tres are not challenged by state institutions. The a r r o n d i s s e m e n t of Medina Gounass tra-ditionally has an extremely low degree of modern education (4.23% in 1998). This points not only to the difficulties of imple-menting educational policies but also to the importance people attach to Muslim educa-t i o n .
Faced with a situation in which crowds of unemployed (but often well-educated) youth dwell the streets of nearby Tamba-counda, parents feel that Qur’anic educa-tion is much more effective for transmitting Islamic knowledge and moral values to their children. In this regard, the education pro-vided by a Muslim community that acts as a c o n t r e - s o c i é t é,4 is very much compatible
